This was an age when knowledge was precious. The Church wasn't generous enough to let outsiders wander into its library and browse as they pleased, so the task of consulting the texts once again fell to Father Green.
By the time the professor left, the priest had only just opened the first few pages of the long-neglected book on heraldry. He was familiarizing himself with the basic rules for combining patterns, in preparation for reading the original documents. It would be at least several all-nighters before he could put any of it into practice—a hair's breadth away, so to speak.
As for tracing the king's genealogy back through eighteen generations, that was even further off. For the sake of secrecy, he had to do that himself.
But Green had stood out as an exceptional graduate of the Church's school. Kraft was optimistic about his ability to learn and believed he would make satisfactory progress before Kraft finished his preliminary experiments.
Yes, preliminary experiments.
The lack of ideal conditions didn't mean there was nothing to do. Small-scale exploratory experiments were entirely feasible.
Of course, he couldn't do them in the clinic. The ground floor housed the outpatient department and wards, the kitchen and dining room were next door, and there wasn't even a decent basement. Kraft would have to be crazy to try anything dangerous in a place like that.
He needed somewhere relatively safe and sturdy, where he could be sure no one would disturb him.
That was harder to find than it sounded. The professor spent the whole journey hesitating, until he suddenly remembered the title that came after his name. He immediately hurried back to the university and asked for a laboratory.
With the Inquisition dropping by from time to time and seriously disrupting the Medical School's normal